Lent 2013, III

III. When bending a warped board back to its proper shape,
the direction we bend it is determined by the direction in which it was warped
in the first place. You have to find the crookedness and go in the opposite
direction. There is another analogy though, that we can use to shed a new light
on the question. What if, instead of a dead wooden plank, we are trying to
straighten a living plant? Most plants have a tendency called heliotropism,
which means they grow in the direction of the sun. You can sometimes see dramatic
examples of this in young trees growing in the shade of buildings or other
trees. Since sunlight can only reach them from one direction, instead of
growing straight and tall, they grow lopsided and twisted. As anyone who has
ever tried to search for the perfect Christmas tree in an overcrowded Christmas
tree farm can attest, trees will grow primarily in the direction they are given
freedom to grow. Another example of heliotropism is the homemade greenhouse
that I did as a school project when I was a kid. Since the plants were
indoorswe used fluorescent lights over
the boxes, but at certain times of the day the sunlight could hit them through
the window as well. The poor confused plant, unable to distinguish between the
real sun and the fake sun, would grow in an undulating fashion. Instead of
having a straight stem it constantly waved back and forth trying to follow both
lights at once. Fortunately for the plant we didn’t leave them confused for
long. Come May, after the ground wasn’t frosted every morning, we transplanted
them out to the garden. There, with no confusing fluorescent lights, it was
free to grow straight to the sun.

#TheNewChivalry

“Chivalry is only a word for that general spirit or state of mind which inspires a man to heroic and generous actions and keeps him conversant with all that is pure and beautiful in the intellectual worlds.
— Kenelm Henry Digby, “Maxims of Christian Chivalry”